The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Happy Birthday Marine Corps !

On 10 November 1775, before the United States was yet a country, the Continental Congress created what became the United States Marine Corps. Legend has it that the first Marine recruiting post was in a bar -- Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. The Corps was 300 strong by 1775, and soon found itself on ships headed for the Caribbean to raid the Bahamas, and the Corps has been carrying our flags around the globe ever since. Today, the Marines are 180,000 strong.

It is altogether typical that on their Corps’ 231st birthday, America’s Marines are carrying the fight to the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as their fathers and brothers did before them in Grenada, at Hue City, the Chosun Reservoir, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Corregidor, Belleau Wood, the Argonne, Peking, Nicaragua, Mexico City, Tripoli and a million other places. Semper Fi guys, and may God be with all of you every day, especially today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Jarhead Red" is billed as "a wine made by Marines, for Marines, at Firestone Vineyard on California’s Central Coast." The Jarhead Red website gives instructions on where to find the wine, and it says that the net proceeds from purchases benefit a good cause, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. Louie Louie says he'll be drinking some this evening, which sounds like a good choice to me.